Short story by Debi Mukherjee: “Unlike the little girls I see outside temples, draped in their pano bhaju’s stringing garlands of Marigolds, I dare not play with the flowers in our garden. Papa cautions me against the rows of Mogras, Shoe-flowers, Frangipanis and a multitude of others. He says that I must not be lured by a flower’s fragrance.”
Poetry by Priyanka Aravind P.: ‘I too had a mother, / Who fed me with knowledge so ancient, / And called me her brightest star, // until I misspelt a note from the sacred chants.’
Short story by Ramya Srinivasan: ‘AX09 reminded Otto of all things that he hated about the job. All that craving for power had ultimately led to complete powerlessness. The lack of free will. The helplessness of being a puppet in someone else’s hands.’
Propaganda films force upon us the grand question, writes Sanjay Basak: Are we loudly applauding the breathtaking production on screen, or are we quietly absorbing the idea that someone, somewhere, deserves to be feared, hated, or erased?